


White Shirt, Brown Trousers

by grayspider1974



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-08-09
Packaged: 2018-11-30 23:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11473701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayspider1974/pseuds/grayspider1974
Summary: In which Hvitserk goes to Egypt to answer a Call of Booty, but instead meets Nobody and gets in a lot of trouble that he has to lie his ass off to get out of.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "Hvitserk" means "White Shirt", and "brown trousers" refers to a VERY old and rather tasteless joke  
> Human body parts (including hair) were valuable commodities in ancient times  
> The Janissaries are the probable inspiration for the Unsullied from Game of Thrones  
> "Saalam al-malikim, Habibi!" is Arabic for "Hello there, Friend!"

Hvitserk Ragnarsson lay in the gutter looking at the stars....or rather, he was seeing stars because he had hit his head when the girl who called herself Nobody had shoved him and then proceeded to beat him bloody and pick his pocket. The money given to him by his half-brother Bjorn to pay for his expenses had lasted less than a month because (like any sailor let loose in a major port with a large sum of cash) he had spent his funds on wine, women and song. Alexandria was a good place for that, but it was also a good place to get mugged by teenaged girls, as had happened after he had gone to the shop of Jumal the Barber-Surgeon to sell his hair for a bit more money. Wigs were very popular in Alexandria, and Hvitserk's sandy plaits fetched a high price because of their exotic colour and lack of split ends. He had also tried to sell some of his blood and semen to Sycorax al Cahina (his landlady and a reputed witch) but the shrivelled hag had glowered at him with amber eyes as ancient and merciless as those of the Great Sphinx, and said "Fuck off, Norwigger. You're no virgin, so your seed and blood are useless to me!" He still had no idea what the nasty hag would have used his blood and semen for, but decided that it was best not to ask. Sycorax reminded him of his mother, only older and really very ugly, so he scooted out the door, trying not to anger Sycorax any further by letting out any of the cats that she claimed were incarnations of the goddess Bastet, of whom she was the last living devotee, but one of the cats escaped anyway. Then Hvitserk purchased a cooked chicken and a lovely melon to share with Nutmeg and headed back to the room he had had the sense to rent at the beginning of his sojourn in Alexandria, when Nobody came and hit him like a ton of bricks. By the time Hvitserk recovered she was gone with his money, his chicken, and his watermelon. Hvitserk rolled over and groaned. Alexandria was a great place to party. The people were prosperous, t and they were willing to tolerate all sorts of decadence and depravity. On the other hand, it was a shitty place to look for a job if your skill-set consisted of a minor talent for mayhem combined with limited literacy and numerical skills. Hvitserk had at first tried to offer his skills as a bodyguard as his brother Bjorn Ironside had done with the Varengian Company in Byzantium, only to learn that the local security corporation (the Janissaries) was not interested in hiring him. In fact, the Janissaries did not exactly hire their employees....they bought them at the slave market at the age of nine or ten, and then castrated them and subjected them to a decade of training before they were hired out. They were ideal guards for harems and such, but Hvitserk shuddered at the idea of losing his manhood....at least until his own privates had been savagely kicked by a deranged teenager in hobnailed caligules! It was not the first time Hvitserk had been beaten by a girl, but that did not help him much. One of Sycorax's living goddesses sidled up to him, sniffing and tickling him with her whiskers.  
"Well," he said to the cat. "The Aesir seem to have forsaken me. What blessing may I ask of thee, O Great and Puissant Goddess?"  
"Merrrow," said the cat, and she licked the mixture of sweat and blood from Hvitserk's face.  
Hvitserk swore, and if atheism had existed in the seventh century, he would have become one.

Some time later, Hvitserk found himself lying on his back in an unfamiliar room. He heard a woman singing to herself, and smelled someone's dinner cooking...some sort of lamb dish with lots of garlic and cumin in it, by the smell.  
"I must have passed out again," he thought. "Someone brought me inside and tended to me." He looked about, and saw that he was in a rather pokey whitewashed room that someone had gone to great lengths to make comfortable with pretty rugs and nearly as many cushions as those of the cobwebby little flat that was the home of a strange old woman that Bjorn had introduced to him as Louhi Sariola, and then rattled off a list of kennings that included "Moon Thief", "Mistress of Song" and "That Terrible Woman," but what drew Hvitserk's eye was a wig stand on which a cloth cap that would eventually become the base of a wig was neatly pinned, next to a small bag of human hair that Hvitserk recognized as his own, some hanks of which had already been attached to the cap. On the wall hung a chart depicting various styles of wig, and Hvitserk guessed that he was in the flat above the shop of Jumal the Barber-Surgeon in which Jumal lived with his mother, wives, and small tribe of children. Hvitserk was a little confused by all the religions he had encountered since leaving Norway. There were Catholics, Cathars, Greek Orthodox and two Culdees in Byzantium, all of whom claimed to be Christian but quarreled over religious doctrine....in fact, the two Culdees that he had met could turn a religious debate into a heated bar brawl in a matter of seconds! Bjorn had only confused Hvitserk more by introducing him to the Cohen family and trying to explain to him the principles of the Jewish faith. Hvitserk had also learned that in Alexandria many people practiced a religion called Islam, and guessed that Jumal the Barber-Surgeon was one of them. From what Hvitserk had been told, Islam was more like Judaism than Christianity, but at the same time it was COMPLETELY UNLIKE Judaism even though many of the rules were the same. Not only that, but all these sexts claimed that there was but one God....but did they all worship the same God, and if they dod then why did they fight all the time? Compared to these monotheistic religions, the cults of the various Aesir were simple and straightforward...  
At this point, Jumal's round, close-cropped head had popped out from behind the bead curtain that divided the living room from the kitchen."Saalam al-malikim, habibi!" he said. Jumal was a big man, the size of Hvitserk's elder half-brother Bjorn but with skin darker than his younger brother Ivar, but while Bjorn was a morose drunk and Ivar was just plain disagreeable, Jumal smiled pretty much all of the time. "I see your awake," he said. "How's your head?"  
"Sore," said Hvitserk "but not as sore as my privates. How did I get here?"  
"Your monkey led me to you," said Jumal. "So I brought you home and my wives put you back together. Then the girl called Nobody arrived and said she had heard that I had purchased some hair of an unusual shade of blonde. She offered me a little less money than I paid you for it, so that she could have a new wig. I told her she had to pay double what she offered for it, and eventually we made an agreement so she could pay in installments. However, I am not a thief." Jumal handed Hvitserk the money that Nobody had stolen from him. "It is only just that I return this to you."  
"If you gave that girl a kick in the babymaker, I'd say we were even!" Hvitserk said "But that's probably too much to ask, is it?"  
"I do not kick people in their privates," said Jumal "for that is not the way of Allah."  
"I'm Norse," said Hvitserk. "We do things differently.  
Jumal chortled. "Then how do your people survive?" he asked.  
Hvitserk pondered this. His own family had been embroiled in a feud that had begun with his mother sleeping with another woman's husband, and had proceeded until the other woman had shot his mother in the back and proclaimed herself the Queen of Norway, then was deposed and exiled to a dismal rock off the coast of Caledonia. Hvitserk had been there himself when he and his brother Ubbe had liberated Kattegat and rescued the half-starved, maddened creature that had been his half-brother Bjorn. "We breed quickly...." he said at last. Then a woman came out and set up a low table that had a round brass top set on a cleverly designed folding base. Another brought out a basin and jug of water for washing one's hands, and a third and fourth brought out plates and a large clay dish with a conical lid. They all looked alike because they wore yashmaks like Bjorn's first wife Thorunn had, and all wore eyeliner and had beautifully painted fingernails. Hvitserk's stomach rumbled. It was obvious that like the Norse and the Jews, these people would offer food to visitors even if they were complete strangers, but he had not eaten in so long that he feared he might be sick. His mouth was terribly dry, and he could still taste blood.   
"I need wine," was all he could say.  
"We do not drink wine," Jumal said.   
"Beer then," said Hvitserk "or mead..."  
His hosts looked puzzled "What is mead?" asked one of the veiled women, and Jumal shrugged. Hvitserk tried to stand up, but lost his balance and toppled over, striking his head on the table and nearly knocking it over.  
"Would you like a glass of coconut water?" asked one of Jumal's wives. Hvitserk saw stars again for a moment, then blackness.


	2. Invasion of the Mummy Snatchers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hvitserk gets a day job and a night job

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Classical and Medieval society, barbers and ladies hair dressers were well-paid and respected. Tomb robbing was less respectable, but paid very well.  
> "Habiru" is supposedly the Egyptian form of "Hebrews"  
> Inhotep was a legendary priest of the Old Kingdom who became the Egyptian God of Healing....but fans of The Mummy may also be familiar with the name!  
> Nad Hammadi is a cache of Classical and early Christian texts re-discovered in the 19th century

Hvitserk sook employment with Jumal the Barber-Surgeon, sweeping up hair and running errands. Jumal not only cut hair, he did tooth extractions, blood letting and minor surgery. His mother, wives, and widowed aunt did a multitude of things related to the care and pampering of the female body, including hair dressing, manicures, the application of henna and intimate waxing. Hvitserk learned what that was when he tried tasting an innocent seeming jar of sticky brown paste. Jumal's mother grabbed it out of his hand and explained what it was for. He remembered the hours his mother used to spend with her mirror and tweezers, plucking her whiskers and swearing, and spat out the gob of paste that he had nearly eaten. "We also use it....down there," the veiled lady added. "Nobody likes getting pubic hair caught in their teeth."Hvitserk idly considered learning the formula and sending it to his half-brother Bjorn, because Bjorn's second wife was a big, strapping woman with a terrifying red jungle on her nether regions and a complete disregard for normal conventions regarding nudity or for beating the crap out of people. Hvitserk had a mental image of holding the big bitch down and stripping off all her body hair, and it gave him a boner even though he new she would probably just kick his ass like she had before she had Bjorn throw him out....which was why Hvitserk was in Alexandria. He was answering a call of booty, only he could not complete his mission because he had been told to find a NICE girl, and prostitutes did not count. He had made the mistake of quarreling with one of them, and literally got a boot up his ass....but at least this boot did not have hobnails, and Nobody came to his rescue. Nobody liked Hvitserk, and despite the circumstances of their meeting, Hvitserk liked Nobody. She was a buxom, bouncy, jolly girl no more than five feet tall from the soles of her shoes to the crown of the rather ratty dreadlocked wig that was her everyday headgear, and she had a perky little brown face like that of Sycorax's cats, and the same yellow eyes. Hvitserk eventually learned that she was the hag's grand daughter, and that she sometimes worked for her, because Sycorax el Cahina dealt in spells and stolen curiousities from the tombs across the river. Alexandria the City of the Living was no where near as the City of the Dead, and back in the days when Egypt was called Khem, the Black Land people believed that you really could take it with you. Not only that, but the bodies of the lords and ladies of Khem had been preserved with natron and spices and scented oils, and Sycorax's most powerful charms used "momia", the pulverized remains of the nobles of ancient Khem. Technically speaking, this was a terrible sacrilege, but Sycorax explained that if they were in any way offended, the nobility of ancient Khem did not arise and take revenge, and that of the Gods of the Black Land only Bastet remained. "Isis and Osiris, Horus and Hathor they were proud. They made war upon the Habiru, and the angry God of the Habiru cast them all down...but Bastet, humble Bastet, peace-loving Goddess of love and laughter chose not to quarrel with Moshe or his strange desert God, and when the Seven Plagues came to Khem and the Gods were toppled from their thrones only Bastet survived." One of the Goddesses jumped into Hvitserk's lap and started purring and kneading his balls. "Beware the God of the Habiru, Hvitserk, and beware the Children of That Which Is, for they are terrible. The Gods of the Black Lands learned this first, then the Gods of the Philistines and the Chaldees, and even the Gods of Olympus have been cast down save for Dionysus and the Muses, who like my Goddess chose not to quarrel with That Which Is..."  
Hvitserk finally understood what Sycorax was rambling about....he had met Rabbi Cohen, and recognized the references to "Moshe" and "Habiru" and the Seven Plagues. "So what you're saying is don't fuck with Jews..."  
"Or Christians or Muslims....they all worship the same God, under different names. Beware of them, and especially beware the Children of That Which Is, destine to die and by so doing shake the gods from their thrones. You may know them when you see them, for they never come as kings or nobles, because That Which Is despises the high and mighty. The Children appear to be quite ordinary save for when That Which Is speaks through them, and their eyes shine with indigo light. Do not kill the Children of That Which Is, for with every death they are reborn more powerful than ever. Do you understand?"  
Hvitserk pondered a bit, then nodded. Bjorn had told him something like this before...."I think I know what you mean," he said.  
"Not entirely," said Sycorax. "I wish for you to go with Nobody and obtain an item for me. It will take a bit of planning and preparation, and a rather long journey..."

The nature of their mission was explained to Hvitserk on the felluca up the Nile to where the river split into the Blue Nile and the White. This was a fairly easy part of their journey, because the prevailing wind in that region blew in the opposite direction to the course of the Nile, past fields and groves that had been replenished annually by the flooding of its banks. There was little to do except squat in the bow of the boat and talk to Nobody, who explained that they were seeking the Black Scroll of Isis that ha been written by the priest Inhotep in the days of the Old Kingdom. It had survived the Hebrew revolt and the invasions of the Hyksos and the Macedonians, but had been destroyed in the burning of the Library of Alexandria. "But the Black Scroll was not destroyed, for it was borrowed from the library by Solon."  
"He was a sorcerer, wasn't he?" asked Hvitserk.  
"A mathematician and an astronomer, actually...." said Nobody  
"Same bloody thing," said Hvitserk. "All that mucking about with charts and symbols and peculiar instruments!"  
Nobody sighed. "I showed you how to use that astrolabe that Jumal lent us. Was there any magic involved in that?"  
Hvitserk shook his head, then nodded. "As far as I can tell science and mathematics are the same thing."  
Nobody shook her head in disbelief. "Whether you call him a scientist or a magician, Solon of Alexandria was not very good at returning library books. His overdue fees were more than you pay in rent, and he was even worse than you when it came to paying it. At any rate, shortly after the Library of Alexandria burned, Solon went to live with relatives in Khartoum, and there he died. My grandmother believes that all his books and papers were purchased by the monks at Nad Hammadi."  
"Monks? Hvitserk asked. "CHRISTIAN monks?"  
"Not exactly," said Nobody. "The order was declared heretical shortly after the Council of Nicaea. Legends say that they hid their vast library, armed themselves, and were all slaughtered in a bloody battle with the Imperial Army. Constantine was a ruthless fucker."  
"They actually sound pretty badass for monks," said Hvitserk. "That's what Vikings would do if we had monks.  
"Well, it did not help them much," said Nobody. "I would rather be a live coward than a dead badass."


	3. Nad Hammadi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hvitserk sets off into the Red Desert of the Sudan, attempts to get jiggy, loses his astrolabe and finds the hidden library of Nad Hammadi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Karhu and Otava are Finnish names for the Great Bear and the Pole Star

They rented a mule in Khartoum, and set out into the mountains. It was arid and insufferably hot, and Hvitserk was glad he had stolen someone's battered felt hat because he burned really easily.Hvitserk argued with Nobody over which navigational tools were better, because he preferred his sun-stone and solar compass, while Nobody preferred her astrolabe because she could use it at night and travel when it was cooler.  
"The Finns taught me how to navigate at night," Hvitserk groused. "You find the Karhu, whose tail points to Otava." A week or so into the Red Desert to the west of Khartoum, a massive sandstorm hit, and rendered all their navigational tools useless, so they hid in a cave to wait out the storm. It got really cold at night, so Hvitserk crawled into Nobody's bedroll. "I'm freezing," he said. Then he asked playfully "Oooooh, what are THESE?"  
""They're called boobs, honey" said Nobody.  
Hvitserk smirked--pleased with himself for being so smooth--and groped lower. "And what is this?" From the feel of things, Nobody was due for another intimate waxing, and she felt a bit...different from some of the girls Hvitserk had felt up.  
"That's my Holy of Holies," she said "....and that's my hymen, so leave it alone, dumbass!"  
"Oh," said Hvitserk."Wow. I didn't know." In fact, he had not even considered that other cultures had different ideas about sex than the Norse. "Are you a tribad?"  
Nobody elbowed Hvitserk in the ribs. "I'm saving it for when I get married, idiot!" Then she twisted around and grabbed Hvitserk's member. "Oh, what's this, then?" she asked brightly. "It was poking me in my back...what a shame it's not very big!"  
Hvitserk was at a loss for words for a moment. After years of sharing the sauna with his brothers, he knew he really was not as well endowed as some other men.   
"I'm about average," he said. "And I'm bigger than my younger brother. He's practically a girl." His brothers had sent a pretty thrall to Ivar's bed as a kindness to him, but Ivar had nearly throttled the girl because she had sniggered at his tiny cock. "That's why they call him Ivar the Boneless."  
Nobody continued to massage Hvitserk's member. "Well, what we have we hold, right?" She may have been a virgin, but she knew how to give a good hand job. Hvitserk felt the blood rushing to his groin, and got set to enjoy himself, but saw that Nutmeg had woken up and was watching them wriggle around in the blankets and beating off.  
"Ssssst! Back off!" Hvitserk growled, and threw his boot at Nutmeg. "I don't like being watched!"  
Nutmeg shrieked, and bared his teeth at Hvitserk, so Hvitserk threw the other boot at him, and then the astrolabe.  
"Hey!" said Nobody. "That's a valuable piece of equipment!" She wriggled out of the bedroll, and crawled to where the astrolabe had fallen at the back of the cave. "It fell down this crack...hey, Whitey, there's a wooden trap door here! Help me get this open!"  
The trap door had been nailed shut, but the wood it was made from was so old and rotten that with a bit of stomping and prying up of boards two people could get it out of the way. "Look here, Whitey! Look!" The chamber beneath was full of tall clay jars arranged on shelves like a farm wife's larder, and the jars were full of papyrus scrolls, while other shelves were laden with books bound in worn leather. "Look at all the books!"

The cache was perhaps one of many, but it still contained more handwritten texts than Hvitserk had ever seen in his life. There were books in Latin and Greek, but also older texts in Demotic and Hebrew. Hvitserk grabbed one these because he knew his half-brother Bjorn knew a bit of the dancing-flame letters of the Jews and might be interested in it, and then Nobody found the shelves where the monks of Nad Hammadi had put the very oldest scrolls, written in the classic hieroglyphs of ancient Khem. the Black Scroll of Isis would be the one written on papyrus that had been stained black, bound in red cords and sealed seven times with lead seals marked with planetary symbols. "Don't open it," said Nobody. "Grandmother knows the protective spells that must be said before opening it, but I do not." The only other incident of note was the mummified corpse that landed on Hvitserk. Evidently, one of the monks had died sitting at his desk by the door, and had been quietly mouldering away unnoticed until he suddenly toppled backwards on top of Hvitserk. He heard what sounded like maniacal laughter, and the grinning face that looked up at him reminded Hvitserk of the skinny and exceedingly plain girl that had been the bosom companion of Bjorn Ironside's bitch of a mother until Lagertha had decided to match her with her hulking son, which had resulted in a monsterous birth that the poor girl had not survived. However, Astrid had never smiled, and this mummified monk seemed tremendously amused by something known only to dead people.   
"Frig!" Hvitserk yelled, and realized that he had pissed himself. "What in Hell was that cackling noise?"  
"Hyenas," said Nobody. "They must be outside the cave..." There was an enraged "HEE-HAW!" from above. "No, they're inside the cave with our donkey!" She dashed to the beast's rescue, yelling an obscure oath about sweet balls of catnip that would only make sense if you worshipped cats. "I am NOT going to walk back to Khartoum, thank you very much!"


	4. Ish'Allah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hvitserk returns to Alexandria, and meets That Which Is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have read Darwin's Origin of Species, and contrary to popular belief, there is nothing in it that actually "proves" that God does not exist! Not only that, but Communism and Fascism (the political ideologies created by secular society to replace religion) have committed more atrocities in the past century than the three Abrahamic religions combined over the past two thousand years.  
> "Baalim Reog" means "Lords of Chaos" in Hebrew, and might be where Tolkien got the word "Balrog."

They managed to rescue their donkey, but Hvitserk's trousers were a lost cause, so he borrowed Nobody's spare pair of harem pants for the return trip to Khartoum. By the time they got there, Nobody's wig had disappeared as well. Hvitserk had had a strange dream in which the wig had suddenly come to life and crawled away across the dunes, but he could not be to sure because he was suffering from severe heat stroke and was hallucinating the day before. "Did you see what happened to her wig?" he asked a birdlike creature that stood nearby watching him curiously.  
"Beep! Beep!" said the bird, who then vanished in a cloud of dust.   
When they got to Khartoum, a European man with an irritated look on his face and a bullwhip on his hip strode up to Hvitserk, shouting "Give me back my hat, jackass!" in English. He then proceeded to punch Hvitserk in the face, grab the hat and stomped off muttering to himself. Nutmeg chittered as Hvitserk lay in the gutter looking at the stars. Hvitserk glared at the ape. "Laugh it up, fuzzball!" he snapped, and then got up and dusted himself off.

Hvitserk spent much of the journey back to Alexandria delirious and covered in aloe to treat his severe sunburn. He had strange dreams, of which he could only remember the one in which his father sat on his bed.  
"Hello, Hvitserk!" said Ragnar Lothbrook, the Wrath of God...only this was not Ragnar, because Father's eyes had been blue, not indigo. "You're a long way from Kattegat."  
"Uh..." said Hvitserk "You're dead."  
The visitor chuckled. "Behold, the Lamb that was slain and yet lives! Would you like another form?" The features of the being that sat by Hvitserk's feet flickered and changed, from fair-skinned to dark, male to female, old to young and back again. Sometimes it looked like people Hvitserk recognised, but many of the faces he saw were those of strangers he might have glimpsed once in a crowd and then forgotten. "Take your pick. All humanity is a part of Me."  
"Go back to looking like my father," said Hvitserk. "You're making me feel sick. Better yet, go away. Whatever it is you want, go ask one of your Chosen People to do it, 'cos I'm a pagan and your religion makes no sense to me.  
The apparition grinned. "It ain't my religion, it's YOURS. I created your world, and your species created religions. It's a part of what your species will one day call evolution. You're at the point where polytheism is giving way to monotheism. In a couple of centuries there will be wars in which one side will be screaming "Deus Vult!" and the other will be screaming "Ish'Allah!" and both will be oblivious to the fact that they are both screaming that My will be done...and My will must indeed be done, because insane as it may be sound they will simply be undergoing a necessary part of their evolution into....well...Myself!"  
"That's awful," said Hvitserk.  
"It will get worse," said That Which Is. "Eventually humans are going to get the idea that a theory that they're related to monkeys somehow proves that I do not exist, and try to place religion with political ideology and the Hammer and the Sickle and the Swastika and the Rising Sun are going to drench the world in blood, and after that they'll make gods out of pseudoscience and narcissistic materialism and quite possibly destroy this wonderful planet that I created....but eventually, they all return to Me. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End."  
"I know who you are," said Hvitserk. "You're Loki, god of piss-ups and confusion."  
The figure's face thinned, and the hair turned sparse and gingery. Marks appeared on his lips as though his lips had been sewn together and then the stitches pulled apart. "I'm not really a primitive anthropomorphic fire deity characterised as a trickster figure. I am what I am, Hvitserk, and so are you. I'm here to warn you that there are worse beings than Loki, or any of the other Norse deities. There are Others, much older and fouler than they could ever be. I banished them from this world at the time of the Flood. The Greeks called them Titans, the Hebrews call them Baalim Reog, and your own people called them Jontuns. Whatever you want to call them, they are bastards, and for your own safety and sanity you do not want them to be let loose, because they don't like the way your species has evolved over the past five thousand years or so. They would take you back to being primitive savages scratching in the dirt by day and cowering in terror of the darkness by night and keep you there for the next ten thousand years. You don't want that, do you?"   
Hvitserk shook his head, though to tell the truth he suspected that back in Norway many people were STILL primitive, cowering savages. "My father used to say that if I ship did not move forward, the waves would swamp it and it would sink," he said.  
"So you understand what you must do, or will understand when the time comes" said That Which Is.  
"I don't," said Hvitserk. "What must I do?"  
"Right now?" The strange indigo eyes that looked out from his father's face were as old as the world and full of all the world's pain, yet there was still laughter in them. "Right now, I need you to WAKE UP!"


	5. Run, Whitey...Run!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hvitserk braves Alexandrian street traffic in drag, and observes a rare natural event

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Both Kattegat and the Pharos of Alexandria were destroyed by earthquakes and tsunamis in the late 9th century. I do not know if these were the same event or occurred separately.

Hvitserk had been coated in aloe vera and wrapped up like a mummy, and cucumber slices had been placed over his eyes like coins to pay Anubis. He sat up awkwardly, peeled the slices from his eyes and ate them because his mouth was painfully dry. Um Jamila bustled out of her kitchen and handed him a glass of what appeared to be coconut water. It stung his lips, but Hvitserk drank it anyway. Then he tried to stand up, but his limbs refused to obey him.  
"You don't look so hot, Whitey" said Um Jamila, as Hvitserk thanked her in Norwegian because he had forgotten how to say "thank you" in Arabic. "The girl who calls herself Nobody dragged you in here raving from heat stroke and half dead from dehydration, paid for her new wig and asked me to watch you until she returned."  
Hvitserk unwrapped his hands and arms and stared at the raw, peeling patches that covered them.  
"You look terrible," said Um Jamila as Hvitserk peeled a patch the size of a dinar from the back of his hand. "Fair-skinned people should stay out of the sun."   
Nutmeg suddenly jumped on Hvitserk, chittering. "Ow!" said Hvitserk. "I need to find some clothes." The first pair of pants that he grabbed belonged to Jumal, and were far too big for him. Um Jamila's clothes fit him better, but the salwar kamiz that he had grabbed was hot pink and covered in rather pretty floral embroidery.   
"You should borrow one of my yashmaks as well," said Um Jamila. "Your face...matches the salwar kamiz, but it's not pretty. You look like a par-boiled tea boy."  
Hvitserk put on the veil. "Is this better?" he asked. "All right then....where dem Egyptian women at?" Nutmeg tugged on a bright pink pant leg and screeched...evidently, only the ape knew where the Egyptian women were at!

Nutmeg led Hvitserk by what was probably the swiftest route possible down to the Alexandria harbour, but a Norwegian in drag is by no means as agile as a langur monkey, so Nutmeg had to stop and wait for him a few times. Nonetheless, Hvitserk made better time than his elder, larger brothers might over roof-tops and along walls, and he even managed a daring rebound off the top of a howdah perched atop a passing camel and straight through the latticed window of a noble house where a bride was being prepared for her wedding. The fact that Hvitserk was in drag probably saved his life, and he did not have time to chat so he defenestrated from the opposite window and landed with a crash on top of the Janissary posted outside the gates of the mansion, narrowly missing the eunuch's spiked helmet.  
"Watch yourself, miss..." the Janissary said as he gently set Hvitserk down. Hvitserk giggled in what he hoped was an appropriately feminine fashion and curtsied before continuing his pursuit. Eventually, he spotted a girl in a fancy blonde wig and an old woman aboard a Pharos Island ferry that was half way across the harbour. It felt like the air had been sucked from Hvitserk's lungs.   
"I don't care what deity may be listening," he said "but I really need some help." There was a rumbling sound, and the paving stones under Hvitserk's feet began to buckle. There was a pillar of smoke on the northern horizon. "What in Frig's name is going on?" he asked Jumal the Barber-Surgeon, who had evidently decided to take part of his day off to go eat lunch on the pier.  
"It looks like a volcanic eruption on the other side of the Mediterranean," said Jumal. "Stromboli or Vesuvio or maybe Aetna again. Sometimes they put off a cloud of smoke over in Italy and we get the aftershocks here. It plays havoc with the weather too...look at that, it's a rare sight!" The waters of the Alexandria harbour had begun to pull back, revealing a sea floor littered with live fish, discarded fish, and the bones of a half-dozen individuals who had fail to repay their debts to the local loan shark. Hvitserk jumped off the foot of the pier and started running, ignoring Jumal's warning that the water would come rushing back in a few minutes.  
"Crazy Norwigger's gonna get himself killed..." Jumal said, and then followed Hvitserk, sand crunching under his big feet as he ran.


	6. Isis Terror

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hvitserk finds himself in trouble, and attempts to get out of it by lying his ass off

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darya al-Cahina was a North African queen with a strange reputation  
> The invocation used here is Lovecraftian gibberish set to the tune of "Louie, Louie"

The girl who called herself Nobody scratched under her wig. Her grandmother had told her to dress nicely for the ceremony, so she had put on a dress and done up her face and nails and felt a little bit ridiculous in her finery. She had ripped the dress while she was subduing the tour guide, and broke a nail picking the door marked NO ADMITTANCE in bright red letters, and then had had to lug a sackful of arcane gear and a large, heavy gong up to the top of the Pharos, and was now sitting in the middle of a twelve-pointed Star of Ashteroth, and would probably be bored out of her skull if she was not perplexed and a little bit frightened by the arcane gear around her. The chalked designs, candles, cords tied in arcane knots, the scattering of salt and sulphur and sacred herbs were all familiar elements of her grandmother's profession, but the chant that Sycorax uttered was not in Coptic, Hebrew or Greek but some alien gibberish unlike anything she had heard before, and as Sycorax solemnly intoned the words "Cthulu Ftagn! O'a bahbeh! M'wanago-HUH! Ai, ai, ai, ai!" she unwrapped a small obsidian knife that looked extremely sharp despite its great age. It looked...sacrificial, and yet there was no beast waiting to be sacrificed. Then Sycorax struck the gong, which made her grand daughter's sinuses vibrate painfully.  
"Arise, Darya el-Cahina, so that with your blood I may call upon the Baalim Reog and open the Gates of Sheol!" she intoned solemnly.  
Nobody blinked several times. She was not used to being called by the name she had been given at birth. In fact, she had chosen to call herself Nobody because she had hated the name Darya. "OH, HELL NO!" she shouted, just as Nutmeg scampered up the stairs screeching his tiny head off, followed by a peculiar figure in a yashmak and a pink salwar khamiz who suddenly collapsed, muttering "Frig! That was a LOT of stairs!"   
"Whitey!" Nobody shouted "What are you doing here?  
Hvitserk raised one hand, desperately trying to catch his breath, and yanked off the yashmak that hid his terrified, sunburned face. For some reason, the sky outside had grown dark, and there was a roaring, rushing sound.  
"Fuck off, Norwigger!" Sycorax hissed.  
"Lemme guess," said Hvitserk. "You're going to offer up your beloved grand daughter as a sacrifice to these Baalim Reog or Titans or Elder Gods or whatever you want to call them, right? And...open up some sort of gateway between the worlds? What would that accomplish?"  
"It would banish the God of the Habiru to the Abyss, and restore the world to the Age of Innocence that we had before the Deluge!"  
"Um," said Hvitserk "I don't think it would. Not if the Baalim Reog are anything like the Aesir." He sighed. "And even if the Baalim Reog are totally benign you can't sacrifice you grand daughter. That's....awful."  
"The Elder Gods demand the blood of a virgin," said Sycorax. Out of the corner of his eye, Hvitserk saw that Jumal the Barber-Surgeon had quietly climbed the stairs after him, and was calmly munching on a kebab and watching them with bright, amused indigo eyes. Nobody stood in the center of the star, as rigid as one of the mummies she and Hvitserk had pilfered from the tombs of ancient Khem and her face a mask of blank terror.  
"You can't use her," said Hvitserk. "She does not want to die, and she's not a virgin!"  
Nobody's lips moved soundlessly, mouthing the words "I only gave you a hand job..."  
Hvitserk waggled his eyebrows and put a finger on his lips. He was not as great a bullshit artist as his brother Ivar (who had convinced several godis that his elder half-brother Bjorn had sexually abused a sea creature and was therefore a pervert and scoundrel beyond redemption) but in a crisis, he knew how to lie his ass off. "Yo, you betcha!" he chirped. "Your grand daughter did the nasty with a filthy Norwigger, and she is a dirty, dirty girl!" Nutmeg screeched and clapped his tiny paws as though in agreement. "She smoked my sausage good!" Hvitserk leered, and made a particularly lewd gesture. "You know what they say about us Northmen...we're oversized, oversexed, and worst of all we're OVER HERE!" Sycorax growled, and threw the knife at him. At first, Hvitserk thought she'd missed him entirely, but he felt something trickling down his leg, and saw that the obsidian blade had hit home perilously close to his groin. "Ow shit!" he said his blood trickled to the floor, and a strange, pulsating light poured through a gash torn in time and space. A long arm reached through the gap and groped at Hvitserk's face, while another pawed at his crotch. "Not me!" he said I'm not your sacrifice!" The hand that reached for his face pulled back and a single eye in the middle of its palm blinked before it went on to grab at Sycorax. Her grand daughter shrieked, ducked the arms that reached for her and bolted past Jumal and down the stairs muttering "I'd rather be a live coward then a dead badass, thank you very much!" Jumal simply batted at the arms that reached for him. "Not me, either. Don't you ever learn?" The eyes in the palms of several of the groping hands blinked, and there was a ghastly, inhuman shriek as the arms pulled back. "Thank you very much!" said Jumal. He gestured at Sycorax. "She's all yours, though. She loves you, and has served you all her life. She has no desire to live in the world I made for humans to dwell in without fear. Take her and BE GONE!" There was more shrieking and wailing that sounded like a wilderness of pain, then a moment of silence as though the Baalim Reog were considering something.   
"Don't make me go in there," said That Which Is. "If you think it's bad in there now, just wait until I get there." Jumal's body nodded at Sycorax. "Well, you got what you wanted...almost. They can't leave Sheol, but if you want to go join the Elder Gods, go right ahead. I always give people a choice."  
The old witch stared up at Jumal the Barber-Surgeon. "Fuck you, you monotheistic camel-fucker!" she shouted, and jumped straight into the Gate of Sheol.  
Hvitserk had fallen to his knees again, weak from blood loss. "I wish I had my brown trousers on," she said to himself as Jumal trotted forward and began to apply pressure to slow the flow of blood from the gash on Hvitserk's leg "I've ruined this pant suit." There was a resounding crash, and the whole tower began to tilt to one side.   
"I told you all that water would be coming back," said Jumal the Barber Surgeon as the Pharos of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the World began to topple into the sea.


	7. Washed, Cut, Dried, and Laid on the Side

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hvitserk recovers from the earthquake and flood, and decides that a lifetime of cutting hair can't be all that bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ivar's nickname "Boneless" may in fact be a misspelling of "banlaus", which means "limitless" or "without boundaries"  
> Cinnamon was once as precious as gold, and its origins masked with fantastic tales

Hvitserk later learned that shortly after he had fainted from blood loss, the wave that had come crashing back into the Alexandria harbour had flung the wreck of a mighty war galley that had sunk some time during the Ptolemaic dynasty against the side of the Pharos, and the lighthouse that had once been one of the Seven Wonders of the World had crumbled like a child's sandcastle at high tide, and although Jumal the Barber Surgeon later claimed to have no memory of what happened that day, he had evidently carried Hvitserk to safety despite the after-shocks that levelled much of the dockyards and neighborhoods near the harbour. There were terrible storms over the next few weeks following the quake, and no one found any sign that Nobody had survived save for a bedraggled wig that someone had found floating in the harbour. It took three months to get the harbour back in working order, but when the ships returned to port, Hvitserk gave a painstakingly worded letter written in Norse and explaining his whereabouts to the captain of one of the pilgrim ships that were his half-brother Bjorn's latest business enterprise.  
The captain regarded Hvitserk quizzically. "You're the brother that Ironsides sent to find a wife, aren't you? Any luck?"  
"I found Nobody," said Hvitserk. His luck with women had been abysmal, but at least Jumal had agreed to take him on as an apprentice, so he would not starve. Hvitserk spent his days sweeping, shampooing, honing razors and shears and tending the leeches that Jumal kept in a tank in the back room, and in a year he might start learning basic hair styling and blood-letting. On Jumal's advice, Hvitserk cropped the hair on his scalp but trained the fuzz on his upper lip into a neat little mustache, and even tried going to the mosque a few times because while he was pretty certain that That Which Is did not care what name people called it or how they chose to worship it was a good idea to pray sometimes. As such, he was startled when he was heading out to take Nutmeg for a walk, turned a corner and encountered a stately camel which bore on its back a particularly ornate howdah, and because the street was narrow, the beast was blocking it. Nutmeg suddenly stood on his hind legs, chittering joyfully as the curtains of the howdah slid back.  
"Do you not know me, Brother?" asked the rider. It took Hvitserk a second or two to recognise the figure in the blue silk kaftan patterned with clouds and tigers as his brother Ivar the Boneless, but while there were many slightly built young men with dark complexions in Alexandria, only Ivar Boneless, son of Ragnar Lothbrook the Wrath of God had those icy blue eyes and mad, shit-eating grin. Beside him sat a small girl with butter-blonde hair that was cut level with her pert little nose who giggled and popped a date in her mouth. Hvitserk realized that her hair was cut that way to hide the fact that she had no eyes.  
"Shhhh, Aino...." said Ivar. "Let me introduce you to Uncle Hvitserk."  
"Hello, Uncle Hvitserk." aino said in a little girl voice that should have been less creepy than it actually was.  
"Frig, Ivar, where in the Nine Worlds have you been?" asked Hvitserk.  
"Wherever I damn well want...." said Ivar "Here and there, up and down. I should be called Ivar the Boundless rather than Boneless. The only place I never want to see again is Kattegat. It's too cold and the people are miserable bastards. I've been to places where it is warm and beautiful and....rich. You wouldn't believe how rich China is or India or Ceylon. I've scuttled through the fields where the flowers that Yidu's special medicine was made from grow, and the groves where they grow cinnamon..."  
"Um," said Hvitserk. "A trader once told me that cinnamon was harvested from the nests of giant birds...."  
"That's just a story," said Ivar. "Like how we tell people that narwhal ivory comes from unicorns. At any rate, the East is even richer than the Mediterranean, and I'm going to introduce you to my business associates, Abdul al-Hazred and Khalil ibn Habibi."  
"I've got a business venture of my own," said Hvitserk. "If I can figure out a way to import masses and masses of human hair, I'll be able to satisfy the demand for wigs by setting up a small factory."  
"Wigs?" asked Ivar.  
"Wigs!" said Hvitserk. "Egyptians love wigs, especially if they're blonde or red. They also love narwhal ivory. Norwegian people have blonde hair, and love silk and spices...."  
"And dates!" Aino added, chewing on another sticky dried fruit.   
r stroked her soft yellow hair, which was the one trait Aino had inheirited from her father. "We also love money," he added thoughtfully. "We have a reputation for fighting and fornicating like animals, but more than that we are avaricious pigs!"  
"Oink, oink!" said Aino. "squeal, piggies, squeal now that the Old Boar is bacon!"  
The sight of a group of Norwegians oinking at one another made Jumal the Barber sigh and shake his head. "Those Norwiggers are crazy sons of bitches," he said, and went back to honing his razor.


End file.
